


1832, Paris

by gladdecease



Category: Hamilton - Miranda, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, Gen, June Rebellion, Podfic Available, revolutionary drinking songs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 04:09:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4946146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gladdecease/pseuds/gladdecease
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lafayette had been party to too many revolutions in his time, successful and failed, French and foreign, to not see how this would end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1832, Paris

**Author's Note:**

> All of this started because I misremembered a name, briefly confusing Lamarque and Lafayette. A quick wiki search confirmed that they were separate people, but Lafayette was cited as speaking at Lamarque's funeral, and a few hours lost to Wikipedia later, this probably inaccurate thing happened.
> 
> I'd apologize, but this is literally based on a pair of musicals.

The Marquis de Lafayette was an old man now - older than he had any right to be - but not so old that he could not bear the weight of a casket on his shoulder. He had borne the weight of much heavier things in his day, even now bore the weight of so many gone before their time. Jean Maximilien Lamarque was not one of those, not at sixty-one, but his loss was a heavy one.

And not one, it seemed, without its consequences.

Look at the people - wearing the cockade Lafayette had himself proposed so many years ago! building barricades once more! calling for Liberty or Death!

That _was_ always the demand, was it not?

Lafayette knew too well which one the king would prefer to give them.

It made Lafayette's heart ache, his shoulders tremble under a newly anticipated weight. He had been party to too many revolutions in his time, successful and failed, French and foreign, to not see how this would end. More blood in the gutters of Paris, more Frenchmen dead for the cause of freedom. And still there would be a king, revoking more rights the longer he remained in power, just as his predecessors before him.

It was a cycle he had witnessed before, and something in Lafayette was certain that if he lived long enough he would witness it again.

That none of them could see a better way - that the voice of the people had gone unheard, time and time again - that Lafayette could not say whether France had failed the democratic process or the reverse -

Were he not a very old man, he might... well, who could say what he might do? It did not matter; Lafayette _was_ very old now, and for all that he was very angry, he was also very tired. Freedom for France - had he once thought it so easy? It had seemed that way, in America. Now, three kings and a dictator later, it seemed anything but.

Thinking of America brought old friends to mind, the song they'd sung to toast the future, so bright and certain.

 _Raise a glass to freedom_  
_Something they can never take away_  
_No matter what they tell you..._  
_Raise a glass to the four of us_  
_Tomorrow there'll be more of us!_  
_Telling the story of tonight..._

All of them were dead now, save Lafayette. Laurens too young, Hamilton so unexpectedly. Mulligan had lived the longest, and he was gone nearly ten years now. 

It had seemed so simple, then. Defeat the British forces, force the British king to accept American independence, go home to France and repeat the process. Was it as easy to those on the barricades now, their revolution that was to Lafayette so clearly doomed? Were they certain that victory was in their grasp? To them, was freedom just days away?

Lafayette stood at his window, eyes unfocused, and thought that he almost heard a song on the air. He listened harder; someone would need to tell their story when this was done.

 _Drink with me_  
_To days gone by..._

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "character in distress" on my [trope_bingo](http://trope-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) [card](http://gladdecease.dreamwidth.org/259.html?thread=5891#cmt5891).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [1832, Paris [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6706831) by [blackglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackglass/pseuds/blackglass)




End file.
